Indonesia’s forests made the news this week because of Greenpeace activists that disrupted logging activities in a peatland forest. Every year loggers mow down a swathe of Indonesian forest the size of Switzerland to sell on to buyers in China, Japan and the United States, mostly. China has become a primary buyer, with nearly half its timber imports illegally brought into the country. In 1998 Chinese authorities oficially barred domestic logging of its own trees, though that ban has only been loosely enforced. In Yichun, in Heilongjiang Province, an entire forest has been lost to unmanaged logging by local factories making toothpicks and paper. The Guardian reported that factories were capable of processing one tree every minute. Now, the lack of trees have led to erosion, sand storms and, without trees to hold the water, flash floods. The city has been designated one of twelve “resource-depleted cities.” So the central government has turned what’s left of the forest into a preserve a la Yosemite National Park, in the USA, to develop a tourism economy. All that’s left to see though, are granite formations.

Further reading: earth stream, Guardian, China Post